Obama's Mid East Peace Talks: a Circus to Distract

Shamus Cooke-  What a joke. President Obama surely knows there is zero chance that his Middle East peace talks will succeed, even with the deck stacked in his favor. All of the main actors are on the U.S. payroll: Israel, Egypt, and Jordan get billions in foreign aide, while the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has proven a pliable puppet for the U.S. while he is disdained by his own people.

Afghanistan Crisis Deepens: U.S. Canada and NATO threaten to extend war.

by Tim Kennelly

On March 13, 2008, Canada’s Parliament voted to extend the country’s military “mission” in Afghanistan to July 2011. The motion by the minority Conservative government was supported by the opposition Liberals. The warmakers correctly estimated that fixing an exit date would deflect mounting opposition to the war among the Canadian public and buy time for Canada’s continued participation.

The Guns of August 
Lowering the Flag on the American Century
By Chalmers Johnson http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175286/

In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.  She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war.

A Nuclear Gamble on the Not-So-Distant Horizon

by Paul Gunter and Linda Gunter reposted from CommonDreams.org Published on Friday, June 4, 2010
Much like Captain Renault in Casablanca, the White House is suddenly shocked, shocked to find that oil rigs can explode, destroying ecosystems and livelihoods. The Obama administration has backed away from its offshore oil expansion policy in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe as the long-term environmental and economical consequences unfold in the Gulf States. Headlines are clamoring for the criminal investigations of BP, TransOcean, Halliburton and ultimately, the federal regulator, Mineral Management Services (MMS). Rather paradoxically, President Obama is using the oil spill to call for more nuclear power.

Friday, August 6th           7:30 pm
Hiroshima-Nagasaki remembered:

The annual lantern ceremony, marking the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan
Craigflower Park / Kosapsom
at Admiral’s Road and Gorge Road West, Saanich